Kirk Anderson was majoring in French and Chinese and,
admittedly, didn't have a clue what he wanted to do after
college. Molly Stevens, who had spent three years living in France,
left a regular office job after only four days when she realized
she couldn't stand being someone's employee. Rachel Burney,
an American who grew up in Japan, was short on funds for college
and scrounging for work that would bring her some quick cash. Three
people from very different backgrounds accidentally hit on a way to
use skills they already had in order to earn money and live the
independent lifestyles they were after. How? With translation
businesses.

Without realizing it, they, like many translators, wandered into
a hot field that's being fueled by the growth of global
commerce and by increasing interest from venture capitalists. The
American Translators Association, or ATA, in Alexandria,
Virginia, has seen its membership more than double in the past
seven years. The organization now provides services to 7,000
members in 60 countries. An $11 billion market in 1999, translation
services are expected to bring in close to $20 billion in 2004, in
part because of an expected 20 percent increase in the number of
Internet subscriptions worldwide and improved Internet access in
Western Europe, South America and the Asia/Pacific, according to
Amy Basta, an analyst with Allied Business Intelligence Inc. in Oyster
Bay, New York.

"The translation industry is experiencing a tremendous
growth spurt due to a variety of forces," says Basta, who
wrote a report on the industry last year. "Increasing
worldwide Internet penetration eliminates distance as a trade
barrier but intensifies the need to overcome the last remaining
obstacle to globalize: language. Companies seeking to reap the
benefits of the burgeoning e-commerce markets must address the fact
that the majority of web pages are in English. Reaching [foreign]
markets will involve translation and localization of web sites,
along with company and product literature."

Entrepreneurs with a knowledge of one or more foreign languages
often are attracted by the ease of starting a translation business.
Of the 3,000 U.S. translation companies, most are small, homebased
operations, launched with a few thousand dollars for basic office
equipment--a computer, a modem, a fax machine, a business phone and
several dictionaries are enough to get most people started.
Translators can live almost anywhere and service clients around the
world. Kirk Anderson, the 34-year-old owner of Passwords
Communications Inc. in Miami Beach and a translator of French,
Spanish and Chinese, earns $100,000 a year working for clients in
the United States, Europe and Latin America.

"If you're near a FedEx drop box, that's all you
need," says Alan Gleason, president of The Translators and
Interpreters Guild in Silver Spring, Maryland, and a translator of
Japanese. Gleason lives in Oakland, California. "Really, you
don't even need that because so much work is done on the
Internet. I often never leave my desk."

Elizabeth Elting, 34, and Phil Shawe, 30 (listed as two of
Entrepreneur's "Young Millionaires" in
November 1999), ran their New York City company, TransPerfect
Translations Inc., from their dorm room while studying for
their MBAs at New York University. Since 1992, the company, which
now earns annual sales of $18 million, has grown to include 125
full-time staffers, 3,500 freelancers, 13 U.S. offices and four
overseas sites. The company translates a variety of technical,
legal, business and marketing materials and web sites for Fortune
500 companies--not bad for a pair of post-grads who financed their
first full year in business with $5,000 in credit-card advances and
ate Ramen noodles at every meal for nearly a year.

But most translators don't need to go on a crash diet to
survive. Full-time freelancers earned an average income of $51,848
in 1998, according to the ATA; part-timers earned $17,748. Those
who have their own agencies can earn considerably more because they
can charge clients higher rates-especially if they're
translating Asian languages, which are in high demand. But agency
owners must then deal with the challenges of marketing and building
a client list.

Few agencies are as large as TransPerfect, but even smaller
firms can expect to earn six figures once they've established
themselves. Stevens, the 28-year-old owner of The Art of
Translation in New York City, says her 4-year-old agency, which
works with 10 regular freelancers, brought in $80,000 last year,
and she expects that figure to increase now that the phone is
ringing regularly.

Stevens, who specializes in translating art and advertising
materials, started marketing her business by sending simple
brochures to all the museums, galleries, and advertising and public
relations agencies she could think of. "What really worked
best, though, was word-of-mouth advertising and getting out there
and networking," she says. "A lecture I did for the ATA
led me to do a program at New York University."

Speak My Language

The most successful translators didn't just study the
language in a classroom--they were immersed in another culture for
an extended period of time. Stevens learned French from her Belgian
nanny when she was a child; later, she spent three years studying
social sciences at the Sorbonne in France. Anderson travelled and
studied in France, Spain and China for one semester each, while
Burney, who is 30 and lives in Urbana, Illinois, grew up in Japan,
where her parents worked as missionaries until she was 18.

Successful translators also tend to specialize. The ATA reports
that the most common areas of specialization are business, law,
industry and technology, arts and humanities, medicine, and
computers. Translating mechanical patents and lawsuit evidence
seemed like a natural specialty for Burney, who previously worked
as a translator for Mitsubishi. With her background in the arts,
Stevens has carved out her specialty of translating materials for
museums, publishing companies, and advertising and public relations
agencies. "It requires a lot of adaptations of concepts; it
can never be a literal translation," she explains.
"It's a lot like creative writing."

Translators who want to thrive in the industry also need to
learn basic business skills or delegate certain tasks to
professionals. Burney admits she's "horrible" at
marketing and managing her $45,000 annual income, so she relies on
assistants in those areas.

The profession may seem glamorous, but there's a
roll-up-your-sleeves, nitty-gritty aspect that few see. Translators
often work in isolation. They're under pressure to produce
high-quality work, often on tight deadlines. "It can be
exhausting, especially when you have to work on weekends and
holidays so your clients can have their documents ready for them
when they come in on Monday morning," says Andrea Bindereif, a
36-year-old German native living in El Cerrito, California, who
specializes in translating computer-related and medical
materials.

Foreign Tongues

The amount of translation work available in a particular
language is often driven by the economy. Translators face a sudden
loss of work and a plummeting income if their language suddenly is
no longer in demand. Turkish and Russian translators are
struggling, for instance, because of the economies in those
countries. The greatest demand, according to Gleason, is for
Spanish translation of legal documents; translators of all European
languages are needed on the East Coast.

Increasingly, American translators are facing competition from
translators around the world, since the internet doesn't
require the translator and the client to be located in the same
town or even the same country. "Some translators are affected
by that," notes Anderson, who translates legal documents and
corporate materials. "That happens when you reach the
higher-end price range. But there's so much work out there
that, for most of us, there's plenty to go around."

The translation boom also has caused many unqualified people to
enter the market, charge very low rates and, at least temporarily,
take away business from more established professionals, industry
insiders say. "I've had some clients who sent their work
abroad to be translated into English because the work is done more
cheaply, but the quality has been so poor that they've come
back to me," Anderson says. "In translation, the old
adage holds: You get what you pay for."

Despite the challenges, translators have never had so many
opportunities, and industry experts believe the best is yet to
come. "It's a big world," says Shawe. "Get out
there and translate."